Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese was born November 17, 1942, in Queens, New York, and grew up in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood community. His parents, Charles and Catherine, worked in New York’s Garment District, while Catholicism and neighborhood life shaped his imagination deeply. Childhood asthma limited his physical activity, encouraging frequent moviegoing; he later described films as education in storytelling and history itself. He studied at New York University’s Washington Square College, earning a bachelor’s degree in English in 1964, then a master’s in 1966. At NYU, he made the short film What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? His first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, premiered in 1967, introducing themes of guilt, masculinity, violence, and redemption. Roger Corman hired him to direct Boxcar Bertha in 1972, a low budget crime film starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine. Mean Streets followed in 1973, with Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro portraying characters navigating loyalty, faith, debt, and danger. Scorsese’s collaboration with De Niro became central to career, encompassing Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, and others. Taxi Driver, released in 1976, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and made Travis Bickle an enduring American film figure. Robert De Niro played Bickle, a Vietnam veteran whose alienation and violent fantasies culminate in an attempted political assassination plot. Raging Bull released in 1980, adapted Jake La Motta’s memoir, with De Niro portraying boxer through jealousy, brutality, and decline. The director explored religious obsession directly in The Last Temptation of Christ, released in 1988, starring Willem Dafoe as Jesus. Protests and threats surrounded that film’s release, and Scorsese returned to faith through Kundun, his 1997 biography of Dalai Lama. Goodfellas in 1990, adapted from Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy, follows Henry Hill and depicts organized crime with narration and dark humor. The film’s Copacabana tracking shot, nightclub violence, and accelerating paranoia demonstrate his precise control of movement, sound, editing, rhythm, onscreen. He directed The Age of Innocence in 1993, adapting Edith Wharton’s novel about restrictive New York society and desire silently. Gangs of New York, released in 2002, dramatized nineteenth century Manhattan and earned him his Academy Award nomination for directing. The Departed finally won Scorsese the Academy Award for Best Director in 2007, after four previous directing nominations, without victory. Later achievements include Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon, each distinct.